Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
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right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
"I think...you could stop me." Accountability was hard with the powers the pair weilded, but only Ronin came close to matching Remi in terms of strength and speed and power. "Amalia can't. Delphia is.." The Lullaby just shrugs, "..and not that she'd bother to, but I think I could ever outlast Wessex if it came to it." Awkward in his strength, the alchemist continues to fidget, unhappy in his own skin. "But I want it to be you, as much as the world needs it to be someone." Remi adds, and though he too is afraid to smile, his eyes rise quickly to where his husband sits, bathed in shadow and starlight.
Ronin says what Remi expects him to next, but it doesn't make it any harder for him to hear. "Stormbreak just feels like it's yours. And I've...promised to try and never see Finn despite waking up beside him, and.." Huffing to himself, Remi closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall. "I'm making excuses. I hate that this feels like a decision that's made for me, because of course I want to live with you again. But I hate what Stormbreak stands for, the racism, the superiority. And I hate that it feels like we'll never escape from the things we're MeAnT tO Do." Sarcastically said, the alchemist wipes one of his cheeks with his shoulder as if he might smear away the crimson blush there.
As for why can't things just be for him? Remi snorts a puff of amusement and shrugs his shoulders as if to say, with what free time, dear husband?
"Stop being so damn understanding." Remi grumps, reaching for the nearest thing to him (a sock), and throwing it at Ronin. He can't look at his husband knowing he'll be unable to hide a smile, and so he glowers at the space beneath the Star's bed as if that will somehow hide how he really feels.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I'd like to think I could stop you," Ronin agrees softly, though it hurts him to even dream about a day where that would need to be the case. "But I also like to think that maybe it would never come to physical blows, if that's the case." To be able to reason things through with Remi - yes, exactly like now, a patronising little voice in the back of his mind says - would mean more than physically having to pin him down. He lifts his eyes just in time to catch Remi's, even if completely by accident, and gods but he wants to reach for the other man in that moment. His knuckles grow white against his knees.
He almost expects the refusal, and unlike in prior times where a quick quip and a joke and it would be over, Ronin doesn't try to hide his disappointment. "After all we've just talked about, but it's the racism that really gets you," he drawls, raising his eyebrows but nonetheless accepting his husband's decision. "Much as I'd want you to live here with me, you'd only be resentful if it wasn't a choice you made," he agrees.
Though there is something they could do, perhaps. And Ronin is about to suggest it when a dirty sock - his dirty sock, to add insult to injury - smacks him in the face. "I will not," he says petulantly, peeling the filthy thing away. "That tasted how your armpits smell," he grumbles.
"Anyway, what I was going to suggest was that you lived on a skyboat and travelled between. We are trying to establish travel routes in and out of Stormbreak, to reduce the need for portals. Skyboats seem to be the best option."
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
"I told Vi as much." Remi says, nodding distantly. "That I don't want you to be a crutch. Or to have to follow in my wake, or.." He shakes his head. "Sometimes I feel like this is a game to Safrin and Ludo. Pinning us against each other. Making us work together in opposite ways, just to see what might happen." And honestly? He wouldn't be surprised. He can picture the scoreboard in his mind, Ronin's name with hearts around it and Safrin clapping with every point he's awarded.
"Maybe not even the racism, just how it affects me, then." Remi replies. "Stormbreak wants Nate dead. Isla. It feels like living in Northaven all over again, only this time I have the PriVilEgE of being born on the right side of things."
Remi bites the inside of his cheek, but that only deepens the dimples that appear. "And yet you put your nose there so often." The alchemist says with a haughty sniff. "But I suppose you don't have much of a choice, since you're so much shorter." He adds, unable to hide his smirk now.
"Did you just suggest I become a pirate of the skies?" And Remi is grinning now before Ronin can clarify that no, it absolutely isn't what he said. But his joy comes too quickly and the alchemist feels a bit nauseous with it. "I'd love to see Jack's face when I park my ship above his."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"No, not a crutch. Or a babysitter, or a guard. Just... yours. To argue with, and to have difficult conversations with, and to build a life with however we can." Ronin's smile is wobbly at best. "I just feel so stupid. It's so obvious now, all the things we were doing to cover up problems." It makes him feel sick with it, honestly. That so much was lost - was nearly lost? - for the sake of a few honest words.
Ronin wrinkles his nose, and it's more a realisation than anything else. "Oh gods, that's why I don't mind it so much, isn't it?" He winces. "It's just more of the same, for me. Ew." Baron Taliesin, here to stay apparently. "I don't blame you for wanting nothing to do with it, in that case. But... even if it's just visiting. Not all of the people are terrible. And it would do you good to be around more than just trees."
He tries and fails not to smile at Remi's remark; the warmth of a joke between them is almost a desperate thing for Ronin, something he seeks out like a man trying to warm his hands in the snow. "Knowing that I have such trouble, you'd think you'd wash them more often," he says, sniffing right back.
Scoffing, then, he shakes his head. "You made yourself a pirate. I merely mentioned living in the skyboat. And I believe the term is mooring, when it's a boat. You'd have to moor your ship above Jack's, likely by dropping an anchor into it."
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
"I would like that." Remi whispers, the hope and need in his voice still too fragile to be said any louder. "I know." He too has realized that, despite the real problems between them, that talking about was all they needed. When they started to be the sort of men who couldn't just talk to one another, he has no idea. Even now it feels...strangely vulnerable, to say what's on his mind. Much as he hates it though, Remi knows it's pushing through this awkwardness that will save them.
Has saved them.
"Ew indeed.' Remi agrees with a snort. About to make a joke about there being plenty of wood around trees, but knowing it would only be to cover up his real feelings, Remi swallows down the quip and nods. "I can do that. I can try."
Trying to look as indignant as possible, Remi steals a glance toward Ronin. It warms something inside of his stomach, and he's helpless to look away. "Yeah, well.." He replies lamely, too overcome by starlight and blue eyes to say anything witty in response.
"I'm the pirate. I think I would know what it's called." Remi quips back with a dramatic roll of his eyes. Swallowing hard though and resist the urge to move to sit beside the Star, the alchemist pulls in a breath. "Before we get to into..this" The banter, the easy way they could slip passed all the hard things in their way. "..what else?" Because there was more. Remi was sure of it, and he'd very much like to only do this once.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I'd like that as well..." Ronin glances up to lock eyes with his husband, and it feels as though he's really seeing him for the first time in a long time. And gods if they don't both look like shit, but Ronin loves Remi all the more for it. Shifting to sit up a bit, he nods to the other man. "Trying is good enough," he assures him, leaving the ews there where they belong. Soul searching about his personal feelings towards nobility and Stormbreak can wait for another occasion. But it's nice, to think that maybe they will, one day, actually have that very conversation.
Scoffing, Ronin raises his eyebrows at Remi. "Very well," he drawls, "park your boat wherever you please." He rakes his fingers through his hair, releasing a breath that finally feels as though he's gotten enough air. But Remi asks what else, and Ronin quells his need to draw more smiles out of the Lullaby to properly think on it. "What is Finn to you?" he asks. "I know we talked about love, and all that. But he's... something else, isn't he?"
And to draw more on that point, "I think I'd like to hand you back my free pass, at least for a while."
03-07-2021, 09:59 PM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2021, 10:09 PM by Remi.)
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Ronin has forever been the most handsome man Remi has ever laid eyes on; heartbroken and tattered, that hasn't changed at all.
Finn.
'Ah.' Remi should have thought of Finn sooner, and his mouth goes dry as he considers his lookalike. "It is something else, yes." The alchemist agrees, sounding somewhat grave; he isn't proud of his relationship with Finn, but in the spirit of honesty, he'll try his best to lay it bare.
"I don't know if things would have gone so far, if we didn't look so alike." Genuinely, he doesn't know. "At first it was just..a strange attraction. Not physical, of course—" Remi chuckles in a self-deprecating way as he sweeps his fingertips across his eyes. "But it escalated so fast from there. We...I mean, I needed to know about him. Every detail he wouldn't share, and so I...just took them. I pushed him out of his body once to see what it was like to look out of his eyes. We've killed and saved each other countless times in dreams. I wake up next to him in bed and want him, but only as another way to just...get at whatever it is."
Feeling like he's been speaking but not saying much of anything at all, Remi stops and sweeps his eyes across the floor to where Ronin sits. "He brings out this darkness in me like I've never known." He wants to look down, to look away from those blue eyes. Which is precisely why he doesn't. "And I like it. I want to know where it leads and why. I want to know why Finn."
Falling silent, cheeks red, Remi offers his husband a softly confused look. "You don't need to do that because of me, if you are. I know sex is just sex. I was just caught up in everything else."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I thought it might be," Ronin murmurs, but there's something softer in the way he speaks now, as if he's almost looking forward to whatever fresh truths will be unearthed between them. Indeed, he shifts as if to get up and move back to bed - a space more comfortable to talk - before realising that Remi would still be the same distance away and changing his mind. So he settles in to try and tease some understanding out of the Spyglass, and he lets out a long sigh when Remi is finished.
"I met him," he says suddenly, as if he's only just realised that this is yet another meeting hidden from his husband; his cheeks colour with it. "I mean, I know I met him, when I was in his dreams and just afterwards, but... I met him again later, at the Sleeping Steps here in Stormbreak. I thought it was you, for a second..." His brow furrows. Ronin has some ideas, but he doesn't want to risk putting them in Remi's head. Then again, keeping it to himself is not in the nature of the conversation that they're having.
Nibbling at his bottom lip, Ronin takes the plunge. "Do you think he's a way you might be able to punish yourself?" he asks. "I get a sort of sweet naivete from him. He reminds me a lot like how you might have been if you had chosen books over making bombs and fireworks. And if you're struggling, with everything that's happened to you... maybe Finn brings out the worst in you, because he reminds you of yourself." It's a shot in the dark. A guess, at best.
At least Ronin's second point is something he's sure about. "I know it's just sex, but... I think I've been using it as a coping mechanism for too long. It's not healthy, and I'm worried it's one of the reasons why I use it to mend patches in our relationship. So I want to give it up. To do better."
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
Remi blinks at that, feeling the strangest sort of vulnerability and invasion of privacy as if Finn should only be his. But that reaction is precisely what's so harmful about his relationship with the Spyglass.
Listening, and hearing Ronin's words for the genuine suggestions they are instead of condescending recommendations, Remi shrugs. "I think...it is probably darker than that." He admits. "Finn is..." Remi's smile is hate-filled, his judgement and shame directed solely at himself. "...he's weak enough to be a type of prey I can't but want to chase down. And strong enough that I never quite can catch him." He feels sick for saying the words, and his eyes sting with tears as he forces himself to sit in the discomfort of his own vices. "It's one of those things that I think if I could just have him, I'd be done with it. But..he quite understandably values his privacy and after waking up in his bed so many times, he can hardly look at me." Not that, had Remi not invaded Finn's rooms, he would have agreed to being had in any sense by the Lullaby.
Remi nods a touch at what Ronin has to say, it sounding so sweet and healthy on the heels of Remi's own admission. "I most certainly used it as a patch." He agrees, thinking of how he buried himself in Isla every way he could to escape feeling anything.
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
For the first time Ronin doesn't hide the way he cringes a little to hear one of these admissions from Remi. The Lullaby is already judging himself for it, and so Ronin will never add his own verbal lashings to that, but... it does sound a lot darker than anything the Star could have come up with, and he swallows down a touch of nausea at imagining how the soft spoken man at the edge of the cliffs might react at being pinned by the predators that lurk beneath Remi's skin.
"I want to say that it might be best to follow through with his wishes. To stay away from him, for his comfort rather than yours. But..." Huffing out a breath through his nose, Ronin looks deeper. Looks to Remi's comfort as well as Finn's. "Would telling him all this make a difference, do you think?" he asks. "It feels like a crossroads where either you're honest, or you're distant." The words unspoken, as between Star and Lullaby, can't comfortably continue.
Swallowing, Ronin tilts his head back against the wall. "Has it really only been Isla?" he asks. "How did you... I mean, I thought she wasn't your type."
03-07-2021, 10:36 PM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2021, 10:36 PM by Remi.)
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
"I know." Remi says with a nod, sighing out a breath. The admission is hard enough to have said, but now sitting in the ringing silence is almost more than the alchemist can endure. But perhaps that's exactly what he deserves. "I don't think it would be fair to him. Finn has his own demons. I don't think I need to add myself to their ranks." Or at least, officially add himself. No doubt Remi was already a permanent fixture in the Spyglass's nightmares whether he was there in fact, or not.
'Only Isla.' Remi agrees, with a dull shrug. "The only other temptation was only ever Ianto, and we both know that's a line I won't cross." Or...maybe Ronin didn't know. Not after everything. 'No..she's not.' Awkwardly scratching at the curls on the back of his head, Remi can only offer his husband a boyish—and perhaps inappropriate—smile. "She had to bite me a few times to learn how to be a manticore for LongNight, which...obviously I wanted her then, but after with you, I was just...on the border of the Grounds, and she was there, and she kissed me...after everything it just felt good. And with it being Isla, it was like her body didn't matter."
Well, that wasn't the full truth, Remi had learned.
"There's the..sex room in the Grounds, and..." Remi shrugs as he looks down, inspecting his fingers as if he might find a splinter and pull it out to dispel his awkwardness. "I did..like it though. It felt...very different to my experiences from before."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
"I don't know if it would be fair to you either, to make yourself a demon in his head more than you already might be," Ronin agrees, letting his shoulders relax as he exhales. "If it helps, and you do decide to become a sky pirate, I don't think he goes anywhere near the Falling. He was struggling enough with the cliffs at the Sleeping Steps," he murmurs. "Do you want me to help with anything, though? With getting something to not see Finn, or...?" He shrugs, letting his husband lead the way on that front.
It's true - Ronin doesn't know, not after all that's happened. But he finds that he doesn't mind either, that he and Remi might actually get a chance to discuss it should it happen. He returns Remi's smile (of course) with a rather crooked one of his own, knowing well the differences between men and women when it comes to enjoyment in the bedroom. "Oh, shit. Longnight for the Grounds - I forgot." Ronin's brows draw together. "I hope she's alright. And... I imagine it felt incredible, after what was going on with us."
He wants to ask about the sex room, but it's a minor detail that can wait given that Ronin can get the gist of it from the name of the room alone. Instead, he merely smiles at his husband. "Do you think you'd want to do it again?" he asks.
right now everything you want is wrong & right now all your dreams are waking up
"Mmm, I was going to ask Ludo for some sort of...charm-shield for him, to keep me away. I offered to forget about him entirely, and he said no." Remi's laugh is dangerous and low, and perhaps a little mad. It was the flip side of what he's said before about Finn: he was clever enough not to get himself caught, and also to keep Remi trying. So it felt, anyway. "But I got so caught up in everything I haven't had a chance to speak with it yet, and ask." If either of them knew about Finn's connection to Safrin Ronin might indeed have an easier time of things. But as it stood, Ludo seemed an obvious enough option.
"She is. " Remi murmurs of Isla. Alright in terms of what LongNight had done, at least. "I think they did it...stopped the monsters. The Grounds seems to have all but burned to the ground, but..." Hey, what did ascended need houses for, anyway.
"Have sex with Isla?" Remi clarifies, blinking rather naively across at Ronin. "I..." Yes and No flash before his eyes, leaving the alchemist exhaling out a stream of confusion. "I don't know. It...can't ever be a spontaneous thing, given she has to be in that place, and I also might...gone a bit overboard.." Rubbing the back of his neck and not even daring an apologetic smile, Remi just swallows hard. "It wasn't just that it was rough, it was...relentless. I was relentless. And I don't want to be that, to her."
The Lullaby
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
Ronin can't help the small smile in response to Remi's clear confusion about Finn and his responses. "I wonder what he would have said if you had suggested he forgets you, instead," he murmurs, knowing Remi well enough to know that he would always put the burden upon himself. To be the one to forget, to be the one to whom the consequences happen. "A charm-shield sounds like a good idea. But would you still seek him out, do you think? If you know he's around?" Ronin doesn't know the depth of Remi's whatever-it-is with Finn, after all, and the question needs to be asked.
It's both strange and not, that Isla is actually an easier subject, though now it's Ronin's turn to scoff out a dark little laugh at the mention that the Grounds are nothing but ashes. "Good," he mutters, remembering his Longnight there with a horror that always feels fresh and new.
"Perhaps you won't be as relentless next time?" It's a gentle suggestion. "I suppose it takes two to tango, though. Isla might not want to put herself in that same position." Ask her, seems to be the obvious solution. Not so strange when honesty and frankness seem to be the theme of the day.
